


Getting To Right-Side Up

by Witchy1ness



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Gen, Some Swearing, mentions of Vietnam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-20
Updated: 2019-04-20
Packaged: 2020-01-20 16:02:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18528406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Witchy1ness/pseuds/Witchy1ness
Summary: Picks up immediately after Eleven closes the gate at the end of Season 2. Everybody regroups at the Byers' residence and debriefs.





	Getting To Right-Side Up

**Author's Note:**

> Stranger Things and all recognizable characters, settings, and related are the property of The Duffer Brothers and Netflix, I'm just borrowing them :)
> 
> Reviews and constructive criticisms welcome; flames will be ignored.
> 
>  
> 
> Last of the finished fics!

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Joyce’s brows knit in confusion as Jonathan pulls up to the house and the Ford LTD’s headlights illuminate an unfamiliar teenager slouched on her front porch. Her unease grows as she utters an automatic “ _Jonathan_ ,” in response to her eldest son’s cursing.

“You know him?”

“Billy Hargrove,” he scowls as he parks the car.

“He’s Max’s step-brother,” Nancy adds, unease apparent.

“Shit. He must have come looking for her.”

Joyce doesn’t bother admonishing him this time, given that the oath accurately reflects her feelings about the situation as well.

_This is the last thing we need tonight._

“How did he get here?”

Joyce pauses in opening her door, blinking absent-mindedly at Nancy, who continues.

“I don’t see his Camaro, and there’s no way he _walked_ all the way here.”

As if waiting for its cue, another set of headlights flashes behind them almost before Nancy finishes speaking. Joyce lets out a yelp and stumbles back into the car, nearly landing on top of Will when the Camaro slides to a stop at a cockeyed angle beside them.

“Mom! Are you okay?” Heart hammering fit to burst out of her chest, Joyce struggles upright.

“I’m fine baby,” she says breathlessly, “did I hurt you?”

Will shakes his head.

They are distracted by the tide of kids that fairly spills out of the Camaro, but their ecstatic cries stutter into silence when the teen – _Billy_ , her mind reminds her – fairly leaps off the front porch and bee-lines towards them.

Jonathan quickly shifts to stand in front of her while the kids scatter and duck around to the far side of the LTD.

All except for Steve, who’s gotten out of the driver’s seat. Joyce can tell a fight is brewing, though she hasn’t the faintest idea _why_.

But Billy doesn’t say a word to any of them, just shoves Steve aside to hop angrily into his car and reverse so hard Joyce is half afraid he’ll wreck something. She winces and ducks at the sound of spraying gravel when he swings the nose of the muscle car around and takes off like a bat out of hell.

_Jesus, Mary, Joseph! What the hell’s going on here?!_

Swinging around to demand exactly that, her sucked-in breath leaves in a wordless exclamation when she gets a proper look at Steve.

“Oh my God! Are you okay? What happened – where the _hell_ did you all go, you were supposed to stay here at the house!”

Cue guilty looks from all of them, but Joyce shakes her head and holds up a hand before they can get a word out.

“You know what, everyone inside first. _Then_ you can tell me what the hell happened here.”

Jonathan has already scooped up a grumbling Will, so Joyce herds everyone else in. She wants to cry as she takes in the new damage to her house – Will’s scattered drawings, the broken furniture and front window (thankfully the kids seem to have removed the corpse of the dog-thing before leaving); there is a gouge in the living room floor she doesn’t remember from earlier, and why are the contents of her refrigerator on the floor?

It seems like they’d just finished fixing everything up. But there is no time for tears, so she refocuses her attention on the kids to get a better look at the wayward group.

Steve’s face looks even worse in full light, but fortunately everyone else seems to be no worse for the wear, though Joyce’s maternal instincts are on full alert as she takes in the dirt that appears to cover all of them.

_And why were they all wearing goggles and scarves around their necks?_

Aside from Steve, the younger teens seem determined to pretend nothing is out of the ordinary as they cluster around Will, all talking over each other. Joyce feels some of her anxiety ease as a wave of affection for the kids washes over her as she takes in the animation on Will’s face; something that had been missing for much too long.

The affection dies a swift death upon Dustin’s exclamation of, “Dude! You should have seen us in the tunnels! There were demodogs _everywhere_ –“

“ _What do you mean you were in the tunnels?!”_

Dead silence falls in the Byers household as every eye turns to her (and a tiny part of Steve’s mind marvels at how such a petite woman could yet be the scariest fucking thing he’s ever come across), and Joyce can feel her anxiety creep back up her throat.

Ever the weakest link, Dustin answers excitedly, impervious to his friends’ frantic hushings. “We set fire to the Hub to draw the demodogs away from El so she could close the gate. And it worked! Right?”

Speechless, Joyce’s gaze travels slowly from the kids to land on Steve with the force of a runaway train and then darts back to the kids as a fresh wave of horror washes over her.

“Outside! All of you! Now!”

Having set Will on a kitchen chair, Jonathan approaches his mother with a cautious hand outstretched.

“Mom, what-“

She spins to face her eldest. “They were in the _tunnels_ , Jonathan! When we went to get Hop out, we had to have decontamination showers. Everyone outside _now_ , and march your butts around back.”

She begins to dig through drawers. “You’ll need to scrub off with the hose –“

“The _hose_?!”

“But it’s October!”

“We’ll catch hypothermia!”

Joyce talks over them.

“You’ll scrub off with the hose, and then you can come inside and shower. There’s soap in the linen closet. Put all your clothes in a garbage bag –“

Jonathan grabs the bag with one hand and her arm with the other. “I got this, Mom,” he says firmly. “You look after Will, okay?”

“Why don’t we have Max go first, and then she and I can start clean-up?” Nancy volunteers.

Overwhelmed, Joyce can only stare at the teens, wrestling with the waves of anxiety that are beginning to crash harder and harder against her.

“ _Mom.”_ Jonathan holds her ice-cold hands in his, gentling his tone as he ducks his head to look at her and when had her baby gotten so big?

“Mom,” he repeats, “we got this. Okay? You get Will cleaned up, and then we’ll let Max shower off first. Steve can handle getting the guys cleaned up –“ he completely ignores Steve’s muttered, “Yeah cause they _totally_ listen to me.” “– and I’ll grab them clothes from our closets. Then everyone will pitch in and get this place cleaned up while we wait for Hopper and El. _And_ they will tell you absolutely everything they did that they probably shouldn’t have done. Okay?”

Joyce lets out a shaky laugh. _I don’t deserve this precious boy._ She blinks back tears of pride as she takes a deep, shaky breath and nods jerkily, “Okay.”

And then everything dissolves into a mess of organized chaos.

Joyce extricates her youngest from his excited friends and shepherds him into the bathroom. One quick shower later and Will is dressed in his warmest pajamas and seated at the kitchen table while Joyce gets to work cleaning up the glass shards from the front window.

She is joined by Nancy and then Max, and Jonathan reappears from distributing clothes and begins to rummage in the kitchen.

Joyce firmly puts aside thoughts on what it is going to cost to feed everyone and focusses instead on hauling out a broken magazine rack (Jonathan’s discovery of the corpse in the refrigerator is probably going to be funny in hindsight, but at the moment it is just one more thing that Joyce has neither the money or the nerves to deal with, because there is no way in hell she is putting food back in that fridge. She’d ordered Steve to take the corpse out back).

Soon enough, the rest of the kids trickle into the kitchen, wearing oversized (Jonathan’s or hers) or slightly too small (Will’s) clothing. A quick brainstorming session after every single one had vehemently opposed going home has them all calling their parents to let them know about the impromptu sleep-over at the Byers’ to work on a school project – with strict assurances they’ll be sent home early enough the next morning to get ready for school.

Steve shrugs when she asks him about contacting his parents, and then sets about grabbing cereal for the kids. Nancy tells her parents she’s staying at a friend’s house, and though Joyce feels a twinge of guilt at the lie it is quickly smothered under utter exhaustion.

She then sets them to cleaning up all of Will’s drawings while she ducks into the bathroom for a quick, freezing shower.

Then, when they are all slumped in various places around the now cleaned living room – eating everything from cereal to pancakes to soup – they tell her exactly what they’ve done.

When they’ve finished – and it had taken a while, what with all the interrupting (Dustin and Steve) and correcting (Lucas and Max) – Joyce sags against the back of the sofa as her head swims and she can’t decide between being terrified, being angry, or being a sobbing mess.

“So, in summary, you drugged Max’s brother –“ 

“Though it sounds like he had it coming,“ Jonathan mutters.

Joyce wants to reprimand him for that, but can’t bring herself to.

“Stole his car and drove it to the tunnels you had been specifically told to stay away from; went down said tunnels, risking your _lives_ in I don’t know _how_ many different ways, and set fire to the – the Hub? And then escaped without setting _yourselves_ on fire or being eaten by – by demodogs?”

Nods and muttered affirmatives make Joyce close her eyes.

Nancy is horrified. “Oh my _god_ Mike! What were you thinking?!”

“We did it for El!” he brother retorts hotly, the rest of his friends chiming in agreement.

“You realize the Chief’s probably going to kill the lot of you, right?” Jonathan’s dry comment sets off a swarm of protestations and mass panic (although the latter is mostly from Steve). 

“Where are they, anyway? Shouldn’t they be here by now?” Max blurts out, silencing all of them.

 _They should,_ Joyce thinks to herself. _They **should.** It’s been over two hours since the gate closed. Hopper, El where the hell are you?_

“They’re fine,” Mike insists stubbornly. “El would have let us know if they were in trouble.”

“Unless she was dead,” Dustin mutters, only to spit a surprised curse when Steve slaps him up the backside of his head.

“What?! I’m just saying –“

“Don’t –“ Lucas and Steve chorus, and Joyce has to fight a wholly inappropriate urge to smile.

Beside her, Will cracks a huge yawn, and within minutes so has everyone else. She places a hand on his forehead. “You’re running a bit of a fever, sweetheart. We need to get you to bed.”

Will shakes his head. “I’m going to stay up,” he insists.

Joyce sighs; casting a motherly eye on the rest of the teens sprawled around her living room, she has an idea.

“Jonathan, Steven, help me move the mattresses out here, okay? Kids, could you clear the furniture out of the way? There’s no reason we can’t be comfortable while we wait.”

Fairly quickly, all three of their mattresses are covering the living room floor, piled with every pillow and blanket Joyce can scrounge. Will is unanimously granted the couch while the rest of them arrange themselves somewhat haphazardly on the mattresses.

Joyce stays seated on the couch, Will cuddled into her side as the kids chatter quietly to each other and everyone watches the front door for the flash of headlights coming up the drive.

 

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Hopper nearly forgets about Doctor Owens.

In fact, if they hadn’t had to take the same stairwell back up he’s pretty sure they would have.

 _Son of a bitch_.

The doctor looks even worse than he had before, but he’s still breathing. Hopper would drag a hand down his face in exasperation except they’re both full of El, who is barely conscious.

_Shit._

Out loud, he tells the unconscious man, “Hang on a little longer doc. Lemme get the kid to the truck and I’ll come back, I swear.”

Because yeah, Owens isn’t his favourite person in the world, but still. He had promised.

Carefully placing El in the passenger seat of the truck, Jim realizes there’s a problem. Despite being more unconscious than awake, the kid won’t let go of his jacket. It sparks a funny sensation somewhere behind his ribs, but he ignores it.

“Kid, you need to let go, okay? You’re safe now; the gate’s closed, the dogs are dead, and I gotta go back for the doc.”

She mumbles something, but her voice is too faint for him to hear.

“What?”

“Demodogs…” she repeats again, a little stronger, and Jim is rolling his eyes before he realizes it.

“Yeah, they’re dead too,” he says drily, and the ghost of a smile flits across her face, but she still refuses to let go of his jacket. There’s a clock ticking in the back of Jim’s brain, and he knows the doctor doesn’t have much time left.

A little more urgently, he tells her, “Kid – El – I need to go back for the doc, okay? He wasn’t looking so good and he needs help, so you need to let go, okay?”

Panic rockets his heart into his throat when instead of responding her eyes roll up in her head and she slumps against him.

“Kid!? Kid! El – El, come on, stay with me – El! _Ellie!_ ”

She jolts back awake, “Tired,” she whimpers, and Jim’s heart drops back to something approximating its normal place in his chest.

“I know sweetheart. I need to go help the doc, and then we’ll get out of here, okay?”

“Mike?” she says hopefully, and Jim tries not to scowl. Petty of him, but he’s really grown to hate that kid’s name over the past year.

“Yeah kid, we’ll go see Mike.”

“Mike,” she sighs hopefully, hands finally releasing his jacket.

Jim tries not to feel jealous at the happiness he can hear in her voice, concentrating instead on getting back into the lab as fast as he can after slinging his long guns back into the Blazer. He winds up carrying Owens out, leaving him on the sidewalk in front of the building as he calls for an ambulance from a nearby payphone that is miraculously working.

As soon as he hangs up, Hopper spits a blue streak as he realizes the corner he’s talked himself into.

Not thinking, he’d called the ambulance as Police Chief Hopper, which meant the ambulance crew would expect to see him when they showed up. Making up a believable excuse for him to be there in the first place is easily done; he’ll just say he wanted to do a check on the property after all the weird shit that’d been going down. But he needs to get El tucked away before anyone else can lay eyes on her.

_Fuck. And sure as flies on shit the suits are gonna be showing up soon, too._

Walking quickly back to the Blazer he opens up the back, carefully shifting aside the guns from earlier. A quick glance shows enough junk in the back of the truck that he should be able to hide El easily enough. He’d rather put her in the backseat, but it’s too risky. The girl is out cold now, which makes it easier to move her into the back, but Hopper wishes he had the chance to explain things to her. The last thing they need is for her to wake up and panic while the suits are lurking around. He debates wrapping her in his jacket, but decides against it when he realizes there’s Owen’s blood on it.

He tucks his hat next to her instead before arranging various things around her to throw off the shape as he tosses a blanket over all of it just as headlights begin to flash through the trees.

There’s an entire convoy of ominous black Crown Vics rolling in behind the ambulance, and Hopper takes a deep breath and prepares to lie through his teeth.

The suits seem unconvinced about his alibi, but let it slide relatively quickly when he says he wants to head to the hospital to check on Owens. They don’t let him go alone, of course, and things nearly go sideways when they try to insist that he come in one of their cars. They compromise by having two of the cars following his Blazer, meaning he doesn’t even have a chance to check on El before they get going.

“Kid, if you’re awake, just stay quiet, okay? I’ll try and get away from these losers as quick as I can,” he mutters.

There’s no response, and he’s not sure if that’s a relief or not. Optimistically, he’s hoping to be in and out of the hospital in under half an hour; just long enough to find out if the Doc’s gonna make it, and hopefully in a state of consciousness so he can convince the man it’s in his _best_ interests to forget he ever saw Eleven.

Unfortunately, his plans are immediately derailed. The nurses reassure him that the doctor will live – with his leg intact, even – but then two of the suits take up residence outside the surgery while the other two hustle him into an empty room and begin interrogating him.

Not that they _call_ it that, of course.

Hopper recites the story he’s worked on during the drive to the hospital. They don’t know yet he had come _back_ to the lab, as opposed to just being there on, say, a property check; but he knows they’ll have questions once Bob’s body is discovered.

So, Hopper is truthful about everything that’s happened right up to him calling the ambulance; instead of telling them he came back to help El close the gate, he came back to look for survivors, and El is never mentioned.

The suits take notes, ask questions, and then ask him to tell the story again.

And again.

And again.

Hopper knows what they’re doing, of course; trying to get him to trip up on the details so they can catch him out. Unfortunately for them, this isn’t Hopper’s first rodeo; he repeats the story verbatim every single time, doing his damnedest to make it seem like his growing agitation and anger is at having to repeat himself and not because he’s got a powerful teenaged girl hidden in his truck.

The only sticky point is when they ask him why he hadn’t contacted them in the intervening hours. Hopper bullshits about not trusting them to actually help – well, maybe not so much bullshit, after all – and they seem unconvinced but drop the matter (too easily and that raises _his_ suspicions).

He doesn’t escape for a full hour, and then has to force himself to walk normally back to his vehicle.

“Kid? You awake yet?”

Nothing, and now he’s beginning to seriously worry. It’s too big of a risk to look now though, so Hopper heads towards the cabin, driving only a little bit above the speed limit. He barely manages to put the Blazer in park before he’s throwing open his door and dashing around to the back.

“Kid? Kid! Ellie, come on – answer me,” he orders, carefully yanking off the blanket. The relief that washes through him as her big brown eyes blink sleepily up at him nearly knocks his knees out from under him. “Shit, El.”

“Late,” she croaks, and Jim’s grin feels like it’s going to split his face.

“Yeah kid, I know. I’m sorry. Let’s get you back up front, okay?”

Confusion gives way to betrayal as she takes in the dark trees surrounding them.

“ _No!”_

Stunned at the rapid change in temperament, it’s only on reflex that Jim manages to catch the girl as she throws herself at him, fists flailing weakly. “The hell – El, what –“

“No!” She sobs. “Mike! Want Mike! Want friends! Liar!”

 _I’m really beginning to hate that word_.

He brushes aside a weak punch as he gently but firmly grabs her face in his hands, forcing her to look at him.

“El! El, look at me. Look at me!”

But she doesn’t, and even in the near-dark he can see her eyes are unfocussed and there are tears rolling down her cheeks, and he risks a small shake.

 “ _Ellie!”_

She stops squirming, but Jim waits until she’s back in the _now_ to continue talking. “I’m just going to grab a few things and then we’ll go back to the Byers, okay? We’ll go back to Mike and your friends.”

“Mike?” she whimpers hoarsely, and he nods.

“Yeah kid, we’ll go see Mike, okay?”

He waits for her to nod before letting her go.

“Bring Grizzle?”

For a second he can only stare blankly at her before realizing she’s referring to the stuffed bear he’d gotten her. “I’ll bring your bear,” he promises her before striding briskly off towards the cabin, nearly breaking out into an all-out run, only managing at the last second to avoid the tripwire.

He barely takes in the chaos that the Byers’ have inflicted on his place, focused on grabbing his faded old army duffel and stuffing it full as he goes down his mental checklist: _She’s gonna need a change of clothes – hell, so do I; pretty sure the kids are gonna refuse to leave tonight, so supplies might be a good idea; pajamas and Grizzle …_

He’s back at the Blazer barely ten minutes later.

El is back in the passenger seat and looks to be asleep, but her eyes are open when he slides back behind the wheel. “Friends?” she says quietly, and Hopper sighs (well, maybe growls) as he hands her the bear before turning the Chevy around.

“Yeah, we’re gonna go see your friends now.”

Hopper drives the Blazer on auto-pilot, exhausted beyond belief and wanting nothing more than to park the truck on the side of the road and pass out. The slumped figure of El in the passenger seat keeps him driving doggedly on, and he isn’t the only one to sigh in relief as the welcoming lights of the Byers house come into view.

Hopper nearly stumbles getting out of the truck, exhaustion-deadened limbs barely functioning. It’s harder then he expects to pick El up again, but he ignores his body’s complaints as she clutches at him. The minute he steps through the door carrying her, he’s swarmed with a bunch of worried teens.

“You’re back –“

“Are you okay –“

“What happened? –“

“It was _so cool_ –“

“We saw Dart –“

“Are you okay?!”

El squirms to be put down and Jim obliges, but doesn’t let go. He ignores the fact that the kids are all ignoring _him_ – except for brief looks of anger and accusation signaling he is obviously Public Enemy Number One – because the Police Chief is frankly too tired and too damn old to give a flying fuck what a bunch of teenaged nerds think about him.

“Hop! Are you –“

“We’re fine,” he interrupts Joyce, voice raised slightly to be heard over the din. “She closed the gate, but it exhausted the hell out of her. I’ll fill you in after we get cleaned up. Can we use your washroom?”

Joyce nods instantly. “This way. There should be hot water now, and I’m sure I could find something she could wear.”

Tired as he is, his police instincts are roused by her words and the realization that all the kids are freshly washed and wearing clothes that seem to have come out of the Byers’ closets.

_What the hell did they do?_

Resolving to solve that particular mystery later, Hopper refocuses his attention on Joyce, only belatedly realizing she was now staring at him in horror.

“Joyce?”

Her jaw works a few times before she manages to speak. “Hopper, there’s _blood_ on your jacket! How badly are you injured?!”

“What?”

Upset, El spins around, gaze flying over him to land on his left shoulder.

Hopper speaks quickly, trying to head off the storm clouds he can see brewing in two sets of brown eyes.

“It’s not mine, it’s Doc Owens.”

“Owens?!” Joyce rocks back, shock mirrored on Mike and Will’s faces.

“His leg was pretty chewed up, but the doctors say he’ll live. I had to carry him out of a stairwell, which is how I got the blood on me.”

Joyce’s shoulders sag in relief, while El settles back.

“Not hurt?”

Hopper’s face softens as he takes in the eyeliner-smeared face staring accusatorily up at him.

“I’m not hurt,” he repeats firmly. “Are you?”

A quick head shake.

“Good. Now, washroom?”

Joyce gives herself a shake, “Right. This way. Let me see about something for her to wear –“

”Thanks Joyce, but I’ve got clothes in the bag – what do you _want_ , kid?”

The Wheeler boy has planted himself in the middle of the hallway, blocking his way.

“I’ll look after El,” he announces, chin jutting out, daring the police Chief, and Hopper’s not sure whether to roar in laughter or anger.

He can feel the embers of his temper start to flare. “Like hell you will kid. Now get out of the way.”

His simmering temper grows as the other kids come and stand beside their friend, ignoring the older teens as they try to get them to stop.

 _Right then_.

Hopper takes a deep breath, ready to rip a strip off the kids, but catches sight of Joyce’s pleading gaze over their heads. His temper leaves in a heaving sigh that feels like it comes from his toes, and his tone isn’t quite so gruff when he speaks, though he does draw himself up to his full, not-so-inconsiderable height.

“You all want to be pissed at me, fine,” he says flatly. “But right now, El needs a shower, a change of clothes, and something to eat. And you are _not_ coming into that bathroom with her. _This is not up for discussion_ ,” he adds harshly, seeing more than one mouth opening to argue.

“ _I’ll_ go into the bathroom with her,” Joyce says firmly, before any of the teens can loose what Hopper sees brewing in their scowls.

The argument is ended with the simple expedient of El walking over to Joyce, and curling an arm around the woman’s waist as she rests her head on Joyce’s shoulder.

“Here.”

Hop swings his duffel off his shoulder and rifles through it before handing Joyce a stack of clothes. The two ladies disappear down the hallway while Jim sets his duffel on the kitchen table and begins pulling out food.

“Figured you might be feeding more than usual,” he tells Jonathan wryly, and the teen manages a ghost of a smile as he nods.

Hopper turns back to the others, eyeing the Harrington kid appraisingly. He’s been cleaned up, but the kid still looks like somebody used him as a punching bag, and since Jonathan’s knuckles are clean…

“Right. You want to tell me what happened after we left?”

“Not really,” is the immediate – and obviously knee-jerk – response, and the younger kids immediately scurry back into the living room (Dustin is immediately gagged) which does _not_ help Hopper’s temper in the slightest.

Harrington quails when Hopper glares at him, which the police chief tries very hard not to revel in. “That’s what I thought,” Jim rumbles, “now spill it.” The boy waits until Hopper’s shucked his jacket and boots and is seated at the kitchen table before talking, and then the words spill out in a torrent.

He finds it very, very hard to hold on to his temper during the tale, but manages to swallow his anger when El reappears, looking just as exhausted but content in her sweats and oversized tshirt, his blue flannel shirt swallowing up her thin frame.

It’s only now that he realizes Joyce is also in sweats and an old, slightly too big shirt. Jim has to bite his tongue when he sees Bruce Springsteen staring back at him.

 _So that’s where that shirt went_.

“You heard about what these kids did?” Hopper asks Joyce.

Seeing her mouth flatten into a thin line tells him everything, but the anger tightening her shoulders bleeds away as her eyes seek out her youngest son.

“I did, but…they did it for Will, for _my_ boy, and it turned out for the best, and I know I shouldn’t be thinking like that, but…” she shrugs, exhaustion and grief lining her features.

“It’s a hell of a lot to take in,” he finishes, gaze drifting to the living room.

Will and El have now been tucked into opposite ends of the couch under blankets, and the rest of their friends are on mattresses on the floor, as they all talk over each other about their adventure.

Steve’s sunk into the armchair, holding an ice pack to his face, while Jonathan and Nancy are sitting on the floor and leaning against the wall unit, all listening with various levels of resignation.

Hopper takes the chance to duck out to the truck and grab the guns from the back, before settling next to Joyce at the kitchen table, leaning the long guns against a chair while laying his Colt service revolver on a cloth spread over the table.  

She watches him silently as he digs around in the duffel bag he’d pitched onto a chair earlier and pulls out his cleaning supplies.

“Shower’s free,” she tells him quietly, eyes following his movements as he places cloths and rods and tools in a specific order around his work space. “There’s food too, apparently. Thank you.”

“After I clean these,” he answers her just as quietly.

She nods like she didn’t expect anything different and he quietly fills her in on everything, which lasts all the way through cleaning the revolver and halfway through the Colt rifle he’d taken off a dead MP.

He keeps one ear cocked on the chatter coming from the living room, and notices that the voices begin to drift off fairly quickly; but a glance shows it’s not because the kids are actually falling asleep.

In fact, they seem to be doing everything they can to stay awake. Dustin keeps slapping his cheeks – and Lucas’ – and both Wheeler siblings are doing the head-bob thing that makes Jim’s neck hurt just to watch. Their reactions are even the same: head bobs two or three times, followed by an abrupt jerk upright and a slightly panicked gaze landing on everyone in the vicinity before landing on the person beside them (Jonathan for Nancy, and El for Mike – which Hopper notes as a discussion for another day) and sighing in relief.

Jim scowls down at his empty hands (when had he finished with the rifle?), not even seeing them but replaying everything that had happened in the past 24 hours – _Shit, has it even been that long?_ – and realizing that yeah, maybe those kids have a damn good reason or two dozen to not want to go to sleep.

 _I should say something to them,_ he thinks uncomfortably. Moralizing pep talks have never been his thing, but something needs to be done. _But they aren’t exactly fans of yours at the moment._ He mulls it over as he grabs the Ithaca.

“You always were good with your hands,” Joyce murmurs absently, and Jim pauses, because he’s pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to hear that.

And he knows she doesn’t mean it like _that_ – the weight of Bob’s death is heavy on both their shoulders and it hasn’t even completely sunken in yet – but he can’t fight the wholly inappropriate smirk that sneaks its way across his face. And damn it he can’t stop the chuckle that rumbles its way out of his chest either.

Joyce’s look of confusion only makes him chuckle harder, and he can see the exact moment she realizes why because her eyes go saucer-round and her face turns completely red. She moans and drops her head into her hands. “I didn’t mean – not like _that –_ I didn’t say that out loud.”

“You did,” Hopper tells her, almost gleefully, which is a strange feeling in and of itself. He can’t remember the last time he felt gleeful about anything.

“ _I did not_ ,” she repeats firmly, desperately, and Hopper just gives in and laughs for real.

It’s inappropriate and horrible, but Joyce joins him after a beat, and if her laughter has a slightly hysterical edge, well she says nothing about the dark edge around his.

“Mom?” Jonathan’s hovering concernedly in the entry to the kitchen, gaze darting between the two adults.

Joyce looks up, face still bright red as she tries to get a grip on herself. “We’re fine, sweetie. I’m fine. Hopper just –“

“Hopper just nothing,” Jim rebuts, smirking, “that one was all on _you,_ Almond Joy.”

Her glare should set him on fire, but all it does is make him grin wider.

Curious now, the rest of the kids have wandered into the kitchen. “Almond Joy is a candy bar,” El tells him, the slight wrinkle in her brow the one she gets when she doesn’t understand something.

“It’s a nickname from when we were in high school,” Joyce admits grudgingly. “My girlfriends called me Joy, so that’s why,” she says firmly.

 _Very_ firmly.

Jim snorts as he peers down the disassembled gun barrel, thinking about teenagers and hormones and two almond humps on top of a chocolate bar that a teenaged male has no problem equating with two other kinds of ‘humps.’

“Say _one word_ James Hopper, and I’ll – I’ll –“ Joyce flounders for an appropriate punishment to level should he even hint there is any more to the story than what she’s already said.

“Wait, you two went to _high school_ together?” Dustin blurts out. “But the Chief’s so _old_!”

Cue wide eyes and dropped jaws, and this time Joyce’s laughter is nearly completely genuine.

Jim discovers he’s still got enough energy to muster up one last glare, but he’s not sure who he should aim it at. “I’m only two years older, thank you very much,” he scowls instead.

Jonathan’s eyes light up and he disappears down the hallway as Joyce yelps. “Jonathan Byers you had better not be getting what I think you’re getting!”

He doesn’t bother replying and is back a few short minutes later, causing Joyce to groan again and put her head back in her hands as she catches sight of her sophomore yearbook.

If it had been any other night, Hopper is pretty sure the kids wouldn’t be showing even half as much interest, but they crowd around the yearbook as Jonathan places it on the table and begins to flip through the pages.

“So here’s Mom – you were what, sixteen?”

From his angle, Hopper sees a brief glimpse of a black-and-white photo, just one more girl with a Betty Paige hairstyle and pearls in a line of them on the open page.

Jonathon doesn’t wait for an answer as he turns a few more pages. “And here’s the Chief.”

Eleven reaches out, tentatively touching the photo of a young man that Hopper can barely remember being.

“Such a baby face!” is Dustin’s pronouncement, which Lucas seconds with a “You look so _weird_ without facial hair.”

“Thank you,” he replies drily, while Joyce tries to hide a smile behind a coffee cup. 

“Guess you aren’t that old, after all.”

And swear to God Dustin is really cruising for it tonight, and Steve thumps him on the head with an exasperated, “You really can’t stay quiet, can you?” 

Their interest already waning, the group begins to head back to the living room, and Hopper resumes disassembling the Ithaca.

Eleven picks up the yearbook, but tiredness causes her to fumble and the bottom of the book hits the table hard enough that something jars loose from the back with a metallic clink.

Nancy, who is closest, picks it up. “It’s a dog tag,” she says, surprise evident.

Hopper’s hands pause, and his stunned gaze flies to Joyce. She stares back at him, half defiant and half…ashamed? But he isn’t given any more time to decipher it as Lucas reads aloud the inscription Hopper can still recite from memory.

“Hopper, James D. R-A-five-one-nine-two-zero-zero-two-four. A pos, no pref.” Everyone starts chattering at once, though El is busy running her fingers over the notched and embossed metal tag.

“It’s the Chief’s tag?”

“What does no pref mean?”

“No preference. It means the Chief has no religion.”

“You were in the _army_? That’s so cool!”

“That was for Vietnam, right? So you went overseas?”

“Is that why you’re so good with guns?”

Dustin’s – and of _course_ it’s Dustin who points it out – “Don’t soldiers give them to their girlfriends when they leave for war?” overlaps with Will’s “Why do you have Chief Hopper’s dog tag, Mom?” and the entire group goes silent, staring at the adults with varying degrees of interest, horror, or outright confusion, depending on their age, gender and/or relation to said adults.

Joyce is still bright red, and Jim can feel the tips of his ears burning.

“Uh…well...” Joyce stutters, then gives up and stares at her hands, wringing them on the tabletop.

Hopper sighs and gets back to cleaning the shotgun, hoping his expression is as bland as he can make his tone.

“Sorry to disappoint you, but there’s no big story to it,” he manages. “Yeah, your mother and I dated for a little while,” he tells Jonathan and Will, “but we broke up when I enlisted. I gave her one of my tags because –“ he shrugged, hands still moving though he didn’t drop his gaze from the Byers boys.

“Well, shit. I figured if I didn’t come back, at least it’d be with someone who’d maybe give a rat’s ass.”

He doesn’t get into why he chose Joyce Horowitz, or his relationship with his parents; it’s not any of the kids’ business, and besides, it’s damn near ancient history.

Fortunately, that particular line of discussion is diverted (though not forever, based off the look on Eleven’s face) when the red-haired girl – Max? – moves closer to the table, staring at the gun parts littering its surface.

“Is that how you know how to do… whatever it is you’re doing with the guns?”

“I’m cleaning them,” he says briefly, privately relieved at the change in topic, making a _no duh?_ Look flash across the redhead’s face.

Joyce cuts off what Hopper suspects is a particularly pithy response from the teen. “Guns need to be cleaned after being used so that they stay in good shape,” she quickly explains, and the teen immediately loses interest.

“Oh,” she shrugs.

“I don’t like guns,” El says quietly, and Hopper sighs at the familiar refrain. “I know you don’t kid. I also know that you _should be sleeping right now_ ,” he adds pointedly.

“So should you,” she sasses back, to which Joyce lets out a surprised laugh.

“We should _all_ be asleep,” she points out ruefully, but Hopper knows that between the relief and the adrenaline and the grief and the nightmares that no one will be sleeping well for a very long time.

Silence falls again, but El isn’t the only one who remains, fascinated, as he finishes disassembling the shotgun and begins to clean the individual parts. The rest of the kids start crowding closer and he feels a weird obligation to explain what he’s doing.

He starts naming parts as he cleans them, and he can tell the kids are impressed – grudgingly, perhaps, but nonetheless – when he manages to finish reassembling the Ithaca without once looking at it.

“That’s so _awesome_ ,” Lucas breathes, and Dustin demands, “Did you learn to do that in Vietnam?”

And suddenly Jim’s exhausted and doesn’t want to talk any more.

 _Shit_.

Vietnam is really _not_ something he wants to get into with a bunch of kids.

Or Joyce.

Or, fuck, anyone.

“I think that’s a discussion for another time,” Joyce says firmly, pushing up from the table and herding the kids back into the living room, Dustin and Lucas’ half-hearted protestations giving way to jaw-cracking yawns.

Eleven remains in the kitchen, startling Hopper when she suddenly throws her arms around his neck.

“I’m glad you came back,” she says softly, and damn it he’s too old to cry at shit like this.

So he hugs her back hard instead, words sticking in his suddenly tight throat.

He knows there’s a crash coming in his future; knows it’s going to hit _hard_. The events of the past few days have stirred up painful memories – the Upside Down reawakening the terror he’d felt in the strange jungles of Vietnam overlapping with the renewed fear of losing another daughter – and it isn’t going to be pretty.

But he’ll make it through.

 _They’ll_ make it through.

 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*


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